Diehard Sri Lankan Tamils living in western countries always miss out on vital facts when they submit arguments for a separate homeland by craftily ignoring the suffering of fellow Tamils in Sri Lanka under Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) now.
The ludicrous contention that Tamils are subject to violent acts was first introduced by equating those with the South African Apartheid and when that failed they moved on to equate to Serbian genocide and ethnic cleansing. The mass exodus of Tamils from Sri Lnka was well engineered by the LTTE while they also masterminded mass exodus of Sinhalese to the South from Tamil areas who chose not to seek refugee status in wealthy nations in the West unlike Tamils who did so for economic reasons.
Tamil diasporas belief that the leader of LTTE – Prabakarans’ promise to deliver their homeland “Eelam,” and LTTE's political hegemony are not, and will not be, synonymous. I would add further that the concept of Eelam pre-existed Prabakaran and the LTTE. The wonderful news to the rest of the world is that it will last much longer after the life of this organization and its leader - a stark reality for Tamil aspirations under Prabakaran. The losses incurred by the Tigers in the battle field - powerless to engage in fully-fledged conventional type warfare and despite the heavy investment in cadres, weaponry and international organizational effort, and now they are mostly depleted as the result of nature - Tsunami.
In short, now that the LTTE has demonstrated its reduced military prowess exposed by the inability to deal with the breakaway Eastern commander Karuna and felt the limitation to terrorism, the LTTE has to present its own detailed political plan under a new leadership. Any further prevarication and the threat to resort to military action means that the LTTE will only further betray the Tamil people.
The loss of Jaffna to the Sri Lanka defence forces (SLA) in 1996, after many years of it functioning as their virtual 'capital' of the LTTE-controlled Eelam state, was a tremendous blow not just to Prabha, but to the Tamil people as a whole. It is a far greater disability for the Tigers than their loss of political legitimacy following the unilateral breaking of the 1995 ceasefire or the condemnation received from the EU recently.
No doubt LTTE's currently weakened position is due to their loss of Jaffna as its capital city and the thickly populated and agricultural intensive regions of the Jaffna Peninsula - the pride of Tamil culture. And it is very unlikely that it ever be in their hands again with the continuing military support coming to GOSL from India, China and the US. Military experts argue that by breaking the ceasefire and provoking SLA offensives - offensives that finally saw the LTTE driven out of the Jaffna heartland - the Prabakaran has betrayed the Tamil people's struggle for self-determination. Of course, this is not the only way that the LTTE has betrayed the cause for which they were the first to take up armed struggle.
Prabakaran’s vicious authoritarianism and hegemony have also decimated the political leadership of their ethnic community and has neutered the overall organizational strength of the multi-force and multi-party movement for Tamil self-determination. If these are not lessons to be learnt, then Tamils will never gain their dignity much less their homeland.
Sinhalese will listen to a new Tamil leadership - not to LTTE’s Prabakaran and his cronies.
To achieve either Eelam or confederated Tamil self-rule by civilian, political, institutional means Tamils must begin to question the leadership of Prabakaran just the same way one spirited Col. Karuna (Vinayagamoorthi Muralitharana) questioned the LTTE. It is time to change LTTE leadership.
The newly elected President Mahinda Rajapakse of Sri Lanka has a different direction to the path the LTTE wish to take Sri Lanka. Read my future blogs on new perspectives to the Tamil issue.
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